conflict resolution

From the McGraw kindergarten lunch room:

A little girl asked me (by way of challenging my deeply set desire to be my own individual self and STILL be a mother): "So whose mom are you?"

Another little girl (the girls really crack me up) waved me down frantically with a complaint about her neighbor.  Feelings crushed, forlorn look on her face she pointed to the boy across the table and said, "He said he would only be friends with me on Fridays."  It was Monday.

He was kind of smirking.  I asked him if he would like it if a friend told him he would only be friends with him on Wednesdays.  He shook his head quickly from side to side.  He quickly apologized for hurting his neighbors feelings with a friendship schedule.   She grinned and said, "That's okay!"

We could SO learn how to handle world conflict from kingergarteners.  Imagine if we call up Iraq and say, "We are really sorry we wanted to protect our oil supply and so we declared war on your country and came in here and haven't ever left.  We don't know what we were thinking."    I'm not sure, "That's okay!" would exactly be the response but an apology is always better than no apology.